1 “As If”: Pouch Cove, Newfoundland.
2 Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
– John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
3 Mount Work: Victoria, B.C.
4 “On the Barrens”: Southeast Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland.
harrier: a.k.a. marsh hawk.
goowiddy: a.k.a. sheep laurel, a.k.a. Kalmia angustifolia.
5 “Alias Rabbit, Alias Snowshoe Hare”: Northeast Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland.
6 “Porch”: Glengarry County, Ontario.
7 “Sleeping with the River”: Campbell River, B.C.
8 tolt: a prominent rounded hill.
volcaniclastic: cf. “Tuff,” page 44.
erratic: a rock carried by a glacier and left in a new location, where it often contrasts with the surrounding rock formations.
CFA: literally “come from away”; allochthonous.
9 imperial canoe trips: Duncan Campbell Scott, one of the Confederation Poets and an agent for the Department of Indian Affairs, made several treaty-making canoe trips in Northern Ontario bribing Ojibwa and Cree people to concede their land. See Stan Dragland, Floating Voice (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1994).
Norval Morrisseau: Ojibwa artist and shaman.
10 “Apparition”: Southeast Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland.
11 Sleeping Places, Newfoundland 1982: an artwork by Marlene Creates comprised of twenty-five black-and-white photographs of ground she slept on around the island of Newfoundland.
12 Epigraph from Robert Hass, “State of the Planet,” in Time and Materials (New York: Ecco Press, 2007).
13 schiller: the visual effect produced, as in Labradorite, when light is reflected inside the rock before being reflected back out.
The Land God Gave to Cain: Labrador, as described by Jacques Cartier.
14 Mistaken Point: site of rare Ediacaran fossils on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. These fossils are evidence of the oldest known animals, or proto-animals, on Earth. Discoveries at Mistaken Point, Ediacara in Australia, and Arkangel in Russia have instigated the establishment of a new geologic period called the Ediacaran, preceding the Cambrian.
Anthropocene: proposed designation for the current epoch.
15 Paradoxides: This genus of trilobite serves as an index fossil both temporally and spatially. It identifies a formation as Mid-Cambrian, since it existed during that relatively brief period, 520 million years ago. Spatially, the presence of a Paradoxides fossil like the one we found that day identifies landmasses that were formerly part of a micro-continent called Avalonia. During much of the Paleozoic era, Avalonia existed as a separate island in the middle of the Iapetus Ocean (the Atlantic’s predecessor), and so developed species unique to itself, rather like the species that are unique to Australia today. Remnants of Avalonia, as established by Paradoxides fossils and other evidence in the rock sequences, include all of the Avalon Peninsula, and parts of Wales, Ireland, New Brunswick, and Massachusetts.
Cephalon, thorax, and pygidium: the head, body, and tail of a trilobite.
16 Thorax: quotations, in italic, are drawn from the Oxford English Dictionary; Richard Fortey’s Trilobite (New York: Vintage, 2001); Søren Kierkegaard’s Practice in Christianity, translated by H.V. Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991); Christopher Dewdney’s “Grid Erectile,” in Predators of the Adoration (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1983); and Meng Hao-jan’s “Listening to Cheng Yin Play His Ch’in,” translated by David Hinton, in The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-jan (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Archipelago Books, 2004).
17 Allochthon and autochthon: originating elsewhere and originating in the place currently found, respectively. Cf. CFA, above.
18 “Tuff”: Portugal Cove, Newfoundland.
Tuff is rock formed from compressed volcanic ash and other debris from eruptions.
19 Snowball Earth: This hypothesis, which has gained increasing credence among geologists, postulates that Earth was entirely (or mostly, depending on the theorist) covered in ice for 100 million years in the late Proterozoic Era. The evidence includes the discovery of formations dating from 750 to 600 million years ago that show the traces of strong glaciation combined with origins at or near the equator.
One problem posed by the Snowball Earth hypothesis was the issue of Earth’s return to seasonal cycles, once winter had become absolute. This is addressed in the last stanza of section I on pages 46–47.
ultramafic: mafic rocks are igneous rocks that are high in magnesium and iron, like basalt. Ultramafic rocks are especially so, having their origins in the mantle of the planet. Peridotite, such as that found in the Tablelands in Gros Morne National Park, is an example of a rare appearance of ultramafic rocks on the surface.
albedo: the reflection of the sun’s rays back into space by ice fields and glaciers, as opposed to their absorption by oceans and rocks.
20 “Rock Flour”: Kluane National Park, Yukon.
katabatic wind: wind descending from a glacier.
Beringia: name given to the area around the current Bering Sea, which was ice-free during the last ice age. It included what is now the bottom of the Bering Strait, which afforded a land bridge between Asia and North America.
21 Crinoid: an echinoderm of the class Crinodea, a.k.a. sea lilies, dating from the Ordovician to the present. Their segmented stalks resemble, but are unrelated to, the vertebrae of chordates such as ourselves.
22 “Gjall”: Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland.
Gjall is a very light rock formed when lava solidifies while flying through the air during an eruption.
23 Wopmay Orogen: An orogen is a mountain-building episode in Earth’s history. The remains of the Wopmay Orogen, which occurred about two billion years ago, lie in the tundra of the Northwest Territories between Great Bear Lake and Coronation Gulf on the Arctic Ocean. The sequence of rock formations in the Wopmay Orogen is the same as those shown in modern orogenies such as the Rockies, the Andes, and the Himalayas.
molasse: a rock formation composed of sediments eroded from mountains following an orogeny.
24 homo faber tristis: man the sad maker.
25 clone: a group of organisms, such as a grove of aspen poplars, deriving from a single individual by asexual means. Aspen clones are among the oldest, as well as the largest, organisms in the world. See John Laird Farrar, Trees in Canada (Markham, Ont.: Fitzhenry & Whiteside and Canadian Forest Service, 1995).
26 gizmo: “Sanding Down This Rocking Chair on a Windy Night” in the book by the same title (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987).
27 Ephemeros: god of trivia, the unregarded, and mayflies.